1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method and apparatus for reducing speckle noise in phased array images. Specifically, the present invention teaches the incoherent compounding of multiple sector images formed from multiple apex positions to produce a phased array image with reduced noise.
2. Description of Related Art
Ultrasound imaging has been widely used in diagnosis of diseases in organs, such as heart, liver, kidney, breast, prostate, thyroid, fetus, blood vessels and others. For example, ultrasound imaging can discern tumors from healthy tissues by subtle difference in the brightness and/or shape of an image. The ultrasound signal scattered from the body contains speckle noise patterns due to interference between multiple echo signals from multiple scatterers in the imaging area. Ultrasound tissue images or B-mode images are especially affected by speckles noise or patterns. This noise is very annoying and overrides on a real image of structures, resulting in lower contrast between the image of the structure and the background. In clinical conditions, the speckle noise can cause the detection of small tumor difficult and thus is a problem.
What is therefore needed is an apparatus and method for using the apparatus to reduce speckle noise in ultrasound images.
Accordingly, it is an object of the present invention to provide a method and apparatus for reducing speckle noise in phased array images.
In accordance with the present invention, a method for reducing noise in ultrasound images comprises the steps of transmitting and receiving from an ultrasound transducer comprising a plurality of apexes a plurality of ultrasound beams from a first apex to form a first sector image comprising a plurality of image intensities, transmitting and receiving from at least one other apex of the transducer a plurality of ultrasound beams to form at least one other sector image comprising a plurality of image intensities overlapping a portion of the first sector image to form an overlap region, and combining the first sector image and the at least one other sector image to produce a compound image.
In accordance with the present invention, a method for reducing noise in ultrasound images comprises the steps of transmitting and receiving from an ultrasound transducer comprising a first and second apex a plurality of ultrasound beams from the first apex to form a first sector image comprising a plurality of image intensities, transmitting and receiving from the second apex a plurality of ultrasound beams to form a second sector image comprising a plurality of image intensities overlapping a portion of the first sector image to form an overlap region, and combining the first sector image and the second sector image to produce a compound image.
In accordance with the present invention, an apparatus for reducing noise in ultrasound images comprises an ultrasound transducer comprising a transmitter and a receiver the transducer comprising a plurality of apexes adapted to transmit and receive a plurality of ultrasound beams from a first apex forming a first sector image comprising a plurality of image intensities the transducer further adapted to transmit and receive a plurality of ultrasound beams from an apex different from the first apex to form at least one other sector image comprising a plurality of image intensities overlapping a portion of the first sector image to form an overlap region, and means for combining the first sector image and the at least one other sector image to produce a compound image.